


Over the Deep

by deodand



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, One Shot, Post-Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22658914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deodand/pseuds/deodand
Summary: When Lena held the Legion data cube in 5x11, she saw a strange shore under a red sky. Lex interpreted the ocean waves as a projection of 'what she wanted' — of Lena’s desire to crack the code to Non Nocere. But what if they meant something else?At home with the Legion data cube, Lena faces herself.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 1
Kudos: 72





	Over the Deep

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr @luthessa! I'm hoping to improve my writing and I love feedback.

Lena let the apartment door close behind her with a weighty thud. She placed her bag on the kitchen counter more carefully than usual, then, like a ghost of the thousand nights she'd followed the same routine, drifted to stand in front of the refrigerator. Her hand grasped the chrome handle—her gaze was fixed unblinkingly into the yellow glow of the fridge light—before she remembered that on this Earth, Lena Luthor didn’t have a drinking problem.

She’d exhausted what alcohol she'd had after her encounter with Lillian—who, surprise of surprises, still didn’t love her—and the weekly staff who stocked her kitchen must have figured she had the habits of a normal, well-adjusted person. Their mistake.

She scanned the other contents of the shelves and drawers—containers of meals carefully prepared by a very expensive chef—and closed the door in contempt.

She wanted nothing.

Circling back to her handbag, she reached inside and removed the steel case in which she’d secured the Legion memory cube. She kicked off her heels, padded over to curl in the corner of her too-large couch, and unlatched the locks. Roused as if from slumber, the cube washed Lena’s face in a soft blue glow.

She lifted it gingerly from its bed of black satin and, in the blink of an eye, sat face-to-face with the hologram image of herself. The projection gazed into the middle distance, standing serenely against a backdrop of rolling waves and dark palms that fluttered under a sunset sky.

“ _What are you searching for?_ ” the projection asked.

It still took her breath away, the 23rd-century technology. Its voice was clear and strong and seemed to echo from within her own consciousness. Suddenly her experiments with Hope and Eve seemed like childish tinkering.

Her flash of anger and disappointment sent a flicker through the hologram, and the waves washing at the phantom-Lena’s ankles surged with a low rumble.

“ _Your thoughts are unreadable,_ ” the AI intoned. “ _I cannot discern your objective amid the psychic turbulence._ ”

Lena bristled. “I’m thinking of what I want.”

Irritatingly, she found that she could hardly conjure up what that meant. She'd spent her entire day balancing the demands of everyone around her—Lex, Lillian, Andrea, adoring LuthorCorp shareholders—all wanting something from her, from morning until a long night at the office. The icing on the cake had been the surprise visit from an imploring Supergirl.

The waves rose higher, rushing now around the AI’s knees and filling Lena’s vision with a swirl of red-gold motes.

“ _Please state your desire,_ ” not-Lena said, as the projected sky darkened behind her. 

The back of Lena’s neck began to prickle. “Q-waves. I—I want to know about Q-waves and Project Non Nocere.”

“ _I am sorry, your request is incongruent with your mental pattern.”_

“What the hell are you good for, then?” Lena snapped. “Not even my own consciousness will help me, apparently!” 

All of a sudden, the apartment filled with a roar. A vibrating wave of energy swept forward like a storm surge, and in a split second Lena was up to her chest in the rush, confronted, to her horror, with a quickly approaching wall of ruby-red antimatter. The crest of the wave sped towards her, devouring, and in her mind she heard one name screamed into the towering darkness—

With a cry, Lena scrambled to her feet and stumbled back. It was three breaths before she realized that annihilation had not come, that the roaring in her ears was only her racing pulse, that the darkness around her was only that of her apartment perched high above the city lights. When her heartbeat slowed and she lowered the arm she’d flung in front of her eyes, the cube was quiescent once more. She faced only her projection, floating impassive amid a calm surf.

“What was that?” Lena spat, trying to hide her trembling voice in an accusation. “That was—that was the Crisis. That’s not what I want.”

 _“The psychic signal is turbulent,_ ” not-Lena repeated. “ _Please clear your mind_.”

“I died — we all did,” Lena shot back. “Forgive me if I’m a bit preoccupied.”

Lena resettled herself on the couch and looked at the cube with new apprehension, as though it were a child or gentle animal that had suddenly revealed a violent streak. 

Breathing deeply, she let her face drop into her hands. She tried to suppress all of her swirling thoughts – the strategies, the hurts and slights that, normally battened down so tightly, now tossed up on the shore of her mind. She discarded them one by one as she had taught herself to do, letting the jetsam fall away.

When she pulled the heels of her hands away from her eyes, her vision swarmed with black spots—enough that for a moment, she didn’t realize what she was seeing. 

The projection in front of her was gone. Instead, perched next to her on the couch and shining slightly from within, the hologram wore a different face – Kara’s face.

It said nothing – just gazed gently at Lena from behind familiar glasses.

Lena let out a harsh breath.

“No,” she said firmly. “Absolutely not. I want you to reset.”

The AI sighed like a breeze. “ _I missed you._ ”

Lena flared with anger again and reached forward—to turn off the cube, to snatch those stupid glasses from right off the hologram’s intangible face—but her hand fell right through the phantom Kara, whose inner light only pulsed slightly in response. Lena shuddered.

Despite herself, she was intrigued – or at least that’s how she named the tugging in her heart that drew her towards the image. “All right,” she said slowly. “If you think you know what I want — show me.”

The AI hovered imperceptibly closer on the couch. “ _It’s so good to be near you,_ ” it said. 

Drawing from Lena’s memories, the hologram recreated the earnestness of Kara’s eyes and the slight tinge in her cheeks as she leaned forward.

The feeling in Lena's chest swelled and she cursed the tears that pricked at her eyes. She knew what this was. This was her empty office, her empty apartment, her empty couch. Her mother’s dark head disappearing below the water. Loneliness, as barren as the trackless sea — but she’d mastered that feeling a thousand times.

“Clearly I’m...I’m nostalgic for what we had,” Lena said, determinedly ignoring the fact that she was speaking to herself. “And I’m having a hard time letting y…Kara go. But she wouldn’t let me know her then. And I don’t _want_ to know her now.”

The AI hummed sympathetically and inched closer. 

“It’s pathetic. And it makes me _furious_ ,” Lena continued as rebel tears continued to form. “You – you gave me everything I wanted and I was gullible enough to eat it out of your hand. I’ve told you what it’s like to be a Luthor: You spend your whole life telling yourself that no one values you, that they lie to you, that they hate you behind your back, that you’ll never know the love and connection that seems to come so easily to normal people – to people like you.”

Lena let out a watery laugh. Somehow now that her tears were flowing, the words poured forth, too.

“Normal enough, anyway. And now I realize that even when you were with me, I never really had you. You held me at a distance, like I feared in what I _thought_ were my worst moments of insecurity. You consoled me then – but it was the truth. And that’s what hurts. I would have done anything for you, and you left me behind.”

“ _But Lena,_ ” not-Kara answered, “ _I’m right here.”_

The AI gestured with one hand. Before Lena’s eyes sprang hundreds of glowing panels—her memories, she realized—showing moments from that other Earth, from their life before. Before the utter annihilation of the multiverse had made their adventures with Cadmus and Morgan Edge seem so small.

“I was there, I remember,” Lena said, trying not to look too closely. “Putting myself under your power, just like I’ve let myself be manipulated all my life.”

“ _What is it that you want, Lena?_ ” the AI asked, shining like the moon over the dark water beside them.

“I don’t want anything from you,” Lena said bitterly.

The AI extended a pearlescent hand to hover over Lena’s knee. Lena’s breath caught and she stared down at it, clenching and unclenching her jaw.

“ _Please, Lena, I’m listening. What do you want?”_

“I told you, I don’t—”

“ _Lena—_ ”

“How hard is it to understand?!” Lena exploded. “I wanted you to love me! I wanted to be the most important person in your world! I wanted you to set me free from this! I wanted you in the moment that I— I died—”

Her throat constricted and she gestured futilely, swallowing the end of her words.

“ _You don’t want to be alone_ ,” not-Kara whispered, tears flowing freely down her own bright face.

Lena felt that her heart would crack open, that her brain would drown in the depth of her unhappiness. She wiped at her cheek and took an unsteady breath before looking the phantom in the eyes for the first time. 

“I'll tell you what I wanted. I used to watch you when you weren’t looking. Whenever I could glance at you out of the corner of my eye before you looked back, I couldn’t get enough of how beautiful you were, how free, how happy you were to be around me. I couldn’t see anything but the way you made me feel. I wanted _you_ , and I buried it down because it was wrong — because if I got too close or clung too hard, you’d get tired of me, your damaged friend who didn’t have anyone else.

“But when the Crisis came and you were gone—when the world was ending and I knew I would die—I realized that all the time I spent watching you, missing you, crying over you — none of that mattered if I couldn’t be close to you in that moment.”

The apartment was completely still and silent but for the quiet ebbing of the current. Lena realized that the hologram didn’t know what to say – that the AI had wanted her to talk, but her own brain hadn’t decided how she wanted Kara to respond. As the hologram gazed patiently at her, its thick-rimmed glasses slowly dissolved and disappeared. Looking tenderly at Lena was Kara, was Supergirl — her best friend, her most painful regret. Her heart ached with it, her throat burned with it, but somewhere beyond the pain, Lena felt the tides of her anger beginning to wane.

“I don’t have anything else to say to you,” Lena sighed, sniffing.

 _“Not yet,”_ not-Kara whispered.

“But maybe you could tell me about your day.” 

_It’s a good lie,_ Lena thought. _If only for a little while._

The projection perked up and shone brighter, an image of heartfelt delight from Lena's memories of another world. As the AI began to ramble on in some algorithmic rendition of Kara’s lively stories, she seemed real enough to touch. Under that red sky, on that strange shore, Lena imagined the warmth of a distant sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Giving a whole new meaning to psychological projection? Also I know I abuse dashes, I know I do-----I'm working on it. Thanks for reading!


End file.
